A Preliminary Study of Correlations explaining Student Interest in Digital Games-Based Learning.

Résumé 0

Digital games-based learning (DGBL) aims to increase student interest in learning in the context of game play. Interest, or a sense of willingness to be involved (Schiefele, 1991), has a positive influence on working with computers and can be distinguished as situational and individual interest (Hidi and Renninger, 2006). Existing works have highlighted that interest is linked to intrinsic motivation, self-efficacy, affordances, and flow, but few empirical studies examine the relationship between their underlying dimensions and interest among children. Affordance (Gibson, 1979) could explain what makes the user want to use a DGBL environment for studying. Self-efficacy (Bandura, 2003) describes the beliefs that lead the individual to believe in his or her abilities and performance. Flow (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990) can be observed through complete absorption in an activity. To better explore the elements that may arouse student interest, a preliminary case study has been carried out in a primary school. A total of 111 students, aged 9 to 12 years (M = 9.78, SD=0.78), participated in this study; the data was collected via questionnaire (Cronbach's alpha coefficient α=0.928). This study indicates that gender (rho = 0.11, p = 0.26) doesn't have a significant effect on students' situational interest within DGBL. It shows that contentment (rho = .54, p < .001), autotelic experience (rho = 0.61, p < .001), action possibilities in-game (rho = 0.52, p